It's your call

The staff assigned to attend the telephone in government offices appear to have been trained in the same school of (mis)communication. You call up an officer; the peon receives the telephone and in a singularly bored tone, asks you your name, on receipt of which information he apparently goes into a state of mild shock since his voice disappears only to be replaced with another equally disinterested one. You bark out smartly ‘good morning sir’ to find that the legitimate owner of the second disembodied voice is the officer’s personal assistant, who, in highly suspicious tones, asks your business.

Being a veteran, he then proceeds to get your vital stats pronouncing himself duly satisfied only when you have divulged your passport details, PAN number, age, weight and extra marital liaisons if any. By now you’re feeling quite shifty-eyed, wondering when Interpol issued the red-corner alert. A series of classical melodies entertain you as you hang on to the receiver with clammy hands. The officer comes on the line; you stumble and stutter into fumbling speech and the discussion is over.

When an officer wishes to converse with his colleague, the ensuing conversation between their highly devoted personal staff is quite illuminating. First they coyly skirt round the issue, engaging in a guessing game about the relative urgency of the call. Then the velvet gloves are off; the first dutiful PS asks the seniority of the other’s officer. The latter may take offence and they will then wrestle around on the telephone ring, waiting to see who will blink. Till one of them turns decisive. Sorry, he shrugs, next time please call up from before to find out when you can call up again.

In the district, the style of receiving calls is perfected to a fine art. The telephone duty is generally a peon whose shift keeps changing. End result, he does not know whether he is coming or going. Even if fully alert and fancy free, he finds it too mundane to just press the buzzer and transfer the call. So the DM’s PA now enters the scene and proceeds to get his kicks out of third-degree interrogation. After establishing your credentials, he airily informs the caller that the DM is having a meal/ conducting a meeting/ busy with sundry tasks of earth-shaking importance …there are innumerable permutations and combinations and always a method in the madness. The DM, basks in a state of blissful ignorance about the tangled webs woven around him, till some candid soul tells him that he is about as accessible as a remote mountain peak.

At the end of it all, a hapless soul has two choices; either hang yourself by the selfsame phone cord or grit your teeth and go back to the awesome task of establishing communication. Good luck.